6 REASONS WHY TOLKIEN’S WRITINGS ARE RELEVANT TODAY

C.S. Lewis said, “myths can open the heart’s back door when the front door is locked. ”When the veil of the familiar is lifted in Fantasy it reveals a glimpse of underlying reality or truth.

J.R.R. Tolkien is the author of the book voted the greatest of the 20th century. “Here are beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron; here is a book that will break your heart,” wrote Lewis of the Lord of the Rings.

Are you fond of fantasy?

I am an unabashed, unashamed, unrepentant fan of the Lord of the Rings.

Fantasy’s a funny thing — Tolkien wrote:

“The Lord of the Rings is one of those things:

If you like you do:

If you don’t you boo.”

But if you like Tolkien he is hobbit forming.

“Unless we become like little hobbits, we cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven. For the Lord became a little hobbit, and He is the rule, not the exception.”Dr. Peter Kreeft, Professor of Philosophy at Boston College

Are you still a child at heart?

• With the words, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit,” was born one of the best-loved epics of the last century. The 1937 fantasy book for children, The Hobbit or There and Back Again grabbed the imaginations of children and the child in men (and women, of course).

• Tolkien wrote The Hobbit for children. His publisher requested a sequel. But Bilbo’s seemingly harmless magical ring soon turned out to be the One Ring to Rule Them All and the Dark Lord wanted it back. It became a tale of Faerie for adults as Bilbo’s nephew, Frodo, set out to destroy The Ring.

Are you intrigued with idea of quest?

• LOTR is the story of a quest. It was a quest for the author—taking him 12 years to write—and it is a quest for the reader.

• My journey started with studying Tolkien and his works and quickly led to a renewed interest in C.S.Lewis and his writings.
The impact of Tolkien and Lewis’ friendship have touched millions of lives.

• Lewis was on a quest to find joy. If it hadn’t been for Tolkien’s influence Lewis might not have turned to Christ and found it.

• If not for Lewis’ encouragement Tolkien might never have finished LOTR.

Tolkien’s writings, especially LOTR, are incredibly relevant today

I began reading LOTR in August of 2001 to prepare for the movies. On September 11, I was midway though the second book, The Two Towers, when the enemy struck down our Twin Towers.

That night I read about “the once great nation that stood between the attacking enemy and the rest of Middle Earth, whose people were given over to idleness and ease, fighting among themselves, until they were conquered in their weakness by the wild men…”

“So it was that Gondor brought about it’s own decay, falling by degrees into dotage, and thinking that the Enemy was asleep, who was only banished not destroyed.”

Remember that day? “The world changed, and a single moment of time was filled with an hour of thought.”

Did we not also feel that—“None may live now as they have lived, and few shall keep what they call their own?”

Tolkien wrote those words over fifty years ago, and like Lewis said, they struck like “lightning from a clear sky.”

There is wisdom and encouragement in Tolkien’s writings

George Santayana wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The LOTR is a feigned history of a time and place on this earth that might have been.

Dr. Kreeft believes the timing of the movies was “a patently Providential coincidence at a time when we need a story about evil to remind us of forgotten wisdom.” I agree.

In those dark days after 9/11 we were looking for hope like the weary little hobbit trudging towards Mount Doom when he “saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, and he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach.”

In the words of the wizard… that was “an encouraging thought.”

I’m a hobbit — are you? Or are you an elf, a man/woman, or a dwarf? Sorry, orcs need not subscribe.